


i^ol 



THE PHILIPPINES; 



A LETTER, 



BY 



BENJAMIN SMITH LYMAN. 



PRIVATELY PRINTED. 
1907. 



_£) o 



1-1 



Gift 

Aulb'ot 

27 f 'OS 



THE PHILIPPINES. 

(a letter privately printed.) 



Dear Friend : 

As to the general condition of the Philippines, so short a 
visit there as three months, from last Christmas until Easter, 
could, of course, produce no more thoroughgoing results than 
mere impressions. But it is well known that the desire to 
speak about strang-e lands is inversely proportioned to the 
length of sojourn in them ; the shorter the stay, the stronger 
the desire to tell of it. Hence, these imperfect notes are an 
attempt at a succinct answer to numerous questions that have 
been asked. 

The climate (with a yearly temperature average of yj de- 
grees at Manila and extremes of 6i degrees and 97 degrees, and 
with a yearly rainfall of 70 to 118 inches, averaging 75^), was 
at its best, in the early part of the dry season so-called, yet this 
year with rather frequent rains in the central island of Cebu ; 
and was quite attractive, like our summer, with little or no 
excessive heat, and with need of a blanket at night. The next 
two or three months were to be warmer and followed by the 
rainy season, and bodily comfort would be less. But the dis- 
comfort from heat is in great part due merely to the clothes 
we insist on wearing. The natural and healthful way is to 
leave the skin uncovered, and then the tropical heat is not disa- 
greeable. In cooler climates we have to heap on more and 
more clothing, bringing the skin into an unnatural and un- 
healthy condition. After hundreds of years of desuetude, the 
very idea of going sanitarily bare in hot weather makes us 
shiver, and covers us with goose-flesh — such squeamish geese 
have we become, to be sure. Among the Americans in the 
Philippines it is not a question whether 

"The chariest maid is prodigal enough. 
If she unmask her beauty to the moon." 
]Men ignore the commendable, airy costume of the native 
laborer, and our own rational athletic, boating or swimming 
attire : and more distantly approximate to the ideally healthful 
condition. No matter how hot the weather, they must needs 
in the privacy of the bed-chamber wear at least the world con- 
quering Hindoo banyan and pyjama (absurdly corrupted to 
pajama), and, as in other parts of the East, may wear them 



until after the early breakfast. For the rest of the day, the 
color, texture and cut are changed, and, with or without a 
shirt, a thin white coat and trousers are worn, requiring" a daily 
or more frequent change, and so quite sanitary as regards 
cleanliness. For rough, active work in the field, khaki trou- 
sers are used, with a khaki flannel shirt or a khaki coat. Under 
such mitigation, the climate appears, like the yet warmer Brit- 
ish Indian climate, to have no harmful effect upon Americans, 
for a number of years, at least ; notwithstanding, too, the alco- 
liolic fire sometimes maintained within, according to the preva- 
lent custom in our newer outlying regions, the result of a 
free-handed, social disposition, proffering and accepting hospi- 
tality in its most convenient form. 

To the eye, the climate at first view offers the manifold 
incontestable charms of luxuriant verdure ; giving, indeed, 
some color to the ancient tradition still believed in Mindanao, 
that the angels once brought the land of Paradise there, and 
that some of it yet remains. There are tall palms topping their 
slender, rather crooked stems with large leaf tufts, and often 
with great clusters of green cocoanuts yielding a delicious 
abundance of cool, refreshing water to quench the thirst of 
travelers in the hot sun. Here and there you see bunches of 
the plume-like bamboo, the inexhaustible source of implements 
and furniture for nearly every need. There are many broad- 
and-long-leaved banana trees, particularly of the kind whose 
leaf stems produce the fine and pliable, but tough and rot defy- 
ing fibres of the world-renowned Manila hemp. There are 
fruit-bearing trees, with bananas, custard apples, mangoes, 
papaya, bread fruit and others, rank justifiers of the frequently 
asserted unwillingness of the natives to work even for their 
daily food. The forests have beautiful hardwoods resembling 
mahogany, rosewood and ebony. The more open savannas 
are covered with tigbao, a rush ten or a dozen feet tall, resem- 
bling a dwarf bamboo ; and with cogon, a coarse grass, six 
or eight feet high. The two together make a thicket that is 
hard for surveyors to penetrate. The young cogon growing 
after prairie fires is said to be nutritious and acceptable food 
for cattle. 

The topography, being of comparatively recent origin, is 
remarkably rough, with steep and high mountains and hardly 
anywhere a plain. The difficult surface and the absence of any 
roads but narrow carabao (or water buffalo) trails make 
traveling in the interior, mostly on foot — "hiking," as it is 
called — very laborious. The carabao is practically the only 
beast of burden or draft, except some small horses in the city, 
and the number of the carabao has of late years been greatly 
reduced by rinderpest. Yet the population on the island of 
Cebu, for example, is scattered almost everywhere, often back 
among the hills, showing the essentially peaceable character 
of the country for generations past. The houses generally 




Mt. Lantauan, inland from Danao, Cebu. The steep upper part is of coralline limestone, 
Upper Miocene (W. D. Smith). The foreground is of lignite-bearing Eocene. 




A few of the Constabulary, with Capt. Hunt, visiting a camp, near Danao, Cebu. 



are wide apart, as in America, and not (as in India) all gath- 
ered into villages or towns. Dangerous wild animals and ven- 
omous snakes and pythons are rare. There is comparative 
freedom from domestic insects, and they are chiefly the cleanly 
ants ; there are some harmless lizards, and the noiseless, swift- 
darting house-lizard may, perhaps, account for the absence of 
the troublesome small vermin. In the forests there are mon- 
keys. Birds are scarce, and so are conspicuous flowers. There 
are no honey-bees in some large regions. 

The spacious, airy domestic architecture, almost wholly of 
wood or bamboo, with abundance of verandas in the older 
towns, is pleasing, and the humbler dwellings of the country 
are at least open to the breeze. They stand upon stilts, so to 
speak, raised by posts several feet above the ground, with 
circulation of air below ; and, also, too often not very good air, 
for this covered empty space is the refuge of pigs and other 
domestic animals ; and even in the cities the lower story, as in 
Spain, is apt to be devoted to the cattle. Indeed, sanitary 
cleanliness is not yet a striking feature, and it is whispered 
that much sickness exists among' the families in what should 
be salubrious mountains, and diseases are thought to spread 
with the help of mosquitoes and impure drinking water. 

The city of Manila has been improved in the scanty eight 
years of American occupation to an altogether astonishing de- 
gree, not only with efficient government and police, but with 
clean streets, well-handled electric- tramways, excellent water 
supply, several fine public and private buildings, broad green 
commons, an improved water front, and an invaluable break- 
water. Americans have been not only inexperienced in such 
outlandish governmental matters, but so completely unac- 
quainted with the experienced treatment of somewhat similar 
conditions by other nations, that it would have been a miracle 
indeed, if no mistakes had been made ; and it is truly wonder- 
ful that the problem so unexpectedly thrust upon us should 
have been so successfully attacked. 

The people seem to show in their faces a striking degree 
of contentment and confidence in Americans, as well as respect 
for them, and no appearance whatever of enmity. The people 
appear, in fact, to be in the main of a gentle, lovable, faithful 
disposition, and compared with other Orientals, free from the 
domination of grossly harmful superstitions, thanks to the 
Spanish tutelage of three hundred and fifty years ; though to 
some Protestant eyes they still doubtless seem to be subject to 
manifold superstitions far from beneficial, that need to be 
rooted out. The Spanish priestly and governing power appar- 
ently eradicated the sanguinary' propensities so common else- 
where in Asia, and have left the people mild and in the main 
virtuous. They are often accused of unwillingness to work 
beyond the needs of the present moment, and of improvidently 
lying off and spending what has been earned in a few days ; 



but with sure pay they are found capable of faithful hard labcwr 
to as great a degree as could be expected in their densely ig- 
norant condition. Indeed, their ignorance seems to be their 
main drawback, and aside from the defects it entails, American 
liking for them is decided. On the tramways in Manila, they 
are found to be particularly well suited by nature to serve as 
conductors and motormen. 

Along with the great good done by Spain to the Philip- 
pines, it saddled upon them the universal use -not only of coffee, 
but still more of tobacco by man, woman and child, unwhole- 
somely tickling the nerves and sapping life and vigor from 
early childhood, and fostering habits of self-indulgence and of 
shunning ever}' tax upon manly energy, and of seeking imme- 
diate and selfish pleasure rather than permanent national and 
racial welfare, and leading to the degeneracy of the whole peo- 
ple ; an effect which has been, some would say, in the case ot 
the Spaniards themselves, a severe and ample revenge inflicted 
by the native American tribes for thousands of lives mercilessly 
taken. The seductive toxicant was comparatively harmless to 
those tribes themselves, because they indulged in it rarely and 
only on ceremonial occasions. 

To obtain a new, better educated generation in the islands 
will, of course, recjuire schooling for thirty years or more 
There is no reason to doubt that in that time as great progress 
may be accomplished as has taken place in a like period in 
Japan, largely by the same means ; but in the Philippines, with 
much less inborn leajiing towards military pursuits than the 
Japanese result of centuries of ennoblement of military life. 
Not but that the military profession has its worthy uses ; yet 
they are not for robbery and oppression — but quite the con- 
trary, for their repression. A' loyal son of Massachusetts may 
look with approval, still more, with pride, on the motto chosen 
for the State by our wise forefathers, expressed in brief bald 
Latin, eked out with a pictorial illustration : 

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem. 
They did not forget that the true object of military strength 
is to establish and maintain peace, so that every man may be 
equally free to follow out his own ideas of welfare without 
needless hindrance from his fellows. What our forefathers did 
in Massachusetts, we are striving to accomplish in the Philip- 
pines. 

We have had astounding success in our assimilation of 
millions of ignorant foreigners who have gradually, but now 
over a million a year, migrated to us. We cannot now doubt our 
capacity to assimilate their six-yearly number, the half-dozen 
millions of Filipinos. The figure, too, is hardly so large in pro- 
portion to our whole population as was the number of the inhabi- 
tants of the Louisiana Purchase when made ; a large share of 
whom, with their descendants, had to wait over a hundred years 
for admission to the union of states. The delay in their case 




A native lady, wife of an American, and their 
six weeks old baby. 




Thicket of tigbao rushes and cogon grass, with a sweet potato patch, at 
camp, inland from Danao, CeMi. 




Photo, by J. B. Dilworth. 

Mr. Isidro, overseer of laborers, and his family, Danao, Cebu. 




Photo, by J. B. Dilworth. 



Friendly looks towards three passing Americans from mountain folk, inland 
from Danao, Cebu. Their dwelling-house. One boy has a cigar in his mouth. 



was the greater, because our federal government had not 
learned, as it now no donbt has, the far-reaching and reciprocal 
benefit of universally schooling even ignorant savages. In adopt- 
ing the principle of universal schooling, our forefathers probably 
little realized they were taking one of the most important steps 
in the progress of the human race ; since such steps are apt to 
be instinctive, the result of thoroughly ingrained and no longer 
elaborately conscious habits of thought. But, certainly, that 
principle is the greatest gift to the world from our America — 
indeed, originally from New England. For this boon guarantees 
not only constantly improving enlightenment, but the impossi- 
bility of any permanent individual or family predominance, 
thereby securing and perpetuating indefinitely a republican 
form of government, the surest guarantee of freedom. Peace, 
too, is strongly promoted by the more enlightened public per- 
ception of others' rights and of the wastefulness of war. 

Above all, then, American instinct has established through- 
out the islands numerous schools, teaching in English to the 
rising generation ; and the Government also promptly began, as 
learner, the thorough investigation of the native resources of the 
country and its natural history, particularly its geology, botany 
and agricultural capabilities, and the ethnography of its nu- 
merous tribes with differing customs and languages ; and 
branches of the Government are still actively and ably at work 
upon those weighty subjects. 

An important part of the population is the Chinese. It is , 
a pity that laws enacted through the political influence of a 
recently imported part of our fellow-citizens, in absurd fear of 
too much industry, sobriety and frugality, forbid the Chinese to 
become more numerous ; for, if admitted freely, they would 
vastly increase the prosperity of the islands, and would largely 
enhance our influence on China. Every Chinaman who returned 
home would be a persuasive missionary of American ideas, of 
universal schooling and republicanism, ideas to which the Chinese 
are sure to take very kindly and readily. The effect upon China 
of the neighboring Philippines under American control, and of 
the return home of many Chinamen who have long been domi- 
ciled among us would be sure to be very great, and would strong- 
ly tend to establish our peace and freedom insuring methods in 
that immense country containing a quarter of the whole human 
race, to whom, with their peace-loving, commercial, industrious 
propensities, those methods would be thoroughly congenial. It 
is earnestly to be hoped that our Government may come to per- 
ceive the justice of the idea that the world is for the whole 
human race to go and come through it at will (except for crim- 
inal interference with fellow-men) ; though claiming at the same 
time that so-called private ownership of land is. a convenient, and 
in a couple of thousand years found to be a highly practical 
arrangement for managing the land, and one in the long run 
altogether beneficial to the whole community, and far better in 



results than the savage plan of having all land directly controlled 
in common by the public. If our Government should therefore 
abandon the exclusion policy so long followed by the Chinese 
themselves, a barbarous policy, as we justly thought sixty years 
ago ; and should admit the Chinese freely to our territory, espe- 
cially to the Philippines, the islands would rejoice and blossom 
as a rose, and with so energetic, intelligent, industrious and 
enterprising a population would become an extremely valuable 
part of our domain. It is only needful to point to Singapore 
and the rest of the Straits Settlements, to show how admirable 
may be a Chinese population under good management. The 
exclusion policy is, indeed, a timid policy, prompted by fear that 
the Chinese would outdo us, so far excel us as to cause the loss 
of our country to ourselves or to our posterity. If they be 
really so superior, would it not be just (that is, best for the 
human race) that they should take possession? Should v^^e not 
in the end humbly admit our inferiority (if so it be) and submiit 
patiently to the loss? But my own belief is firm that, notwith- 
standing the great merits of the Chinese, our own vigor and 
enterprise and ingenuity will surpass theirs, and that in the end 
we shall be in the lead. 

A fellow steamer-passenger, from JVTontana, soon after my 
arrival in the Philippines, began his brief accjuaintance with me 
by remarking : "The United States Government is making one 
big mistake out here ; it treats the natives like white men, instead 
of like niggers." "Yet here's the spot! Out, damned spot! 
Out, I say ! What, will these hands ne'er be clean ?" But it is 
not a wholly indelible stain ; for, observe how in Philadelphia, 
where only forty ydars ago it took a long struggle to acquire 
for the colored people the right to use the public street cars ; 
now you see colored boys associating on the most friendly, equal 
terms with their white schoolmates, regardless of superficial 
color. You impatiently repeat: "Only forty years!" as if that 
were an interminable time ; more than a generation ! But what 
are forty years in the life of a nation? Consider, too, the diffi- 
culty of eradicating prejudices hundreds of years old, and based 
on such deep-laid foundations, far deeper at first than the silly 
one of complexion. We may well congratulate ourselves on 
the speed of our progress as one of the results of our universal 
schooling. But what if the goal be not yet attained, and our 
hands not yet quite immaculate? Must we therefore wholly 
abstain from other work, from all contact with other men? 
Must we wait until we are purely virtuous? No; though we 
be sinners, our aim, without doubt, is more or less consciously 
high, and is not deteriorating, but constantly higher and higher. 
While we are, of course, far from perfection, we still in the main 
effectually strive for substantial justice. With all our excep- 
tional western outrages against Chinese laborers, we still, in 
the main, even in California, treat them more humanely, more 
like fellow human beings naturally entitled to equal political 




Cathedral Square, Cebu, looking south from the Ave Maria house. Preparations for a religious 
procession on Good Friday evening. One float, moved by men beneath. The Cathedral tower on 
the right. 




The Ave Maria dwelling-house, city of Cebu, looking north. 
15 



rights than they are treated elsewhere, not excepting China. 
They are, with rather kindly meant familiarity and hardly with 
contempt, r.udely called "Jol^"/' but are not cuffed and hustled 
off the sidewalk, as they were by lordly Caucasians at Shanghai 
twenty-five years ago. So, too, with the negro in the South. 

Americans now in the Philippines seem to be in great part 
made up of discharged soldiers. There were 60,000 soldiers 
there at one time, and are about 16,000 now, besides American 
officers of the 5000 native, soldier-like, armed, khaki-uniformed 
constabulary. Many of those Americans have preferred to stay 
there rather than return to America. Their military work was 
most valiantly done and with amazing energy under extremely 
great exposure to hardship. They lived a rough life, and, as 
young men, they took "roughing it" as a matter of course, and 
many of them had at home probably been accustomed to a total 
absence of luxury ; and now, after becoming well-to-do in the 
Philippines, they retain to a surprising degree the simpHcity of 
their household habits — in some points hardly complying with 
important sanitary laws. They would laugh at the idea of ex- 
pecting a pillow more than two inches thick by six inches wide, 
or a clean pillow case, or a mattress, or two bed sheets in cool 
weather, or ordinary bedroom utensils, or a clean towel, or a 
napkin, or frequent brushing or sweeping, "cheap luxuries," as 
they have elsewhere been regarded, even in camp, for hundreds 
of years, but now by many considered sanitary necessities. For 
example, you cannot tell whether the edge of the blanket hugged 
to your chin was not last night at your feet, or perhaps at some 
other man's boots. Camp life in the Philippines, however, is by 
no means so disgustingly filthy as it was twenty years ago in 
the Rocky Mountains, though very far behind what it was forty 
years ago in British India, with its still cheaper cost of carriage. 
With a thoroughly American, generous, sociable nature, those 
charming fellows have in many cases unfortunately taken to 
somewhat overindulgence in the easily-acquired luxury of alco- 
holic drink, freely receiving kind offers of it from each other, 
and handsomely^ returning them. Doubtless, too, an excessive- 
ly nitrogenous, carnivorous diet creates in them a craving for 
alcohol, as well as for sweetmeats. At length, the custom has 
become established among many otherwise excellent men to 
consume far more alcohol than is really good for their health, 
especially in the tropics. Though decidedly intoxicated men are 
rarely seen, it is the mischievous "booze," as it is called in the 
Philippines, rather than the climate, that is so harmful to a large 
number, though not by any means all, of the Americans there. 

American merchants are gradually becoming more numer- 
ous in the Philippines, because of the growing market for their 
goods. That is partly the result of work already done there by 
enterprising, wideawake Americans, in building tramways, rail- 
roads, water works, harbors and other public improvements. 
They have likewise given occupation to a certain number of 



American engineers and others. Employment has also been 
given to about a thousand school teachers, who, with more than 
five times as many native teachers and half a million pupils, are 
revolutionizing the educational condition throughout the islands. 
A number of the Americans originally brought to the Philippines 
by these affairs and by the military and constabulary operations 
have found tempting openings for small or large investmenls in 
an agricultural way, in growing hemp, sugar, cocoanuts, coffee, 
tobacco or other farm products and in lumbering, and have 
found permanent homes and charming wives, too, in those attrac- 
tive lands of perpetual summer, "where the fruits and the 
flowers chase one another in unbroken circle through the year." 
The sum total of such diverse benefits to Americans is already 
great, but has, of course, hardly yet had time to begin, and is 
constantly growing. It is said that some 700 miles of railroad 
are now building in the Philippines, and the completion and 
extension of such work cannot but greatly increase the oppor- 
tunities for further profit to our country and its people, w^th 
immense advantage a1 the same time to all the inhabitants of 
the islands. The inclination of Americans to stay and benefit 
the country by investing capital in important enterprises would 
be greatly increased by a more widespread complete feeling of 
security in the permanency of the American occupation, a feeling 
that has been much hindered by the outgivings of perhaps well- 
meaning, though assuredly ill-informed poHticians. 

But it would be childlike to demand immediate overflowing 
pecuniary compensation for the annexation of the Philippines. 
Grown men should look further ahead. Yet the commercial 
returns have already been considerable and highly encouraging. 
The islands are already self-supporting, and will be still more 
abundantly so, when, two years hence, we are free from the 
provisions of the treaty with Spain, requiring the admission ot 
all Spanish merchandise on equal terms with American. Then, 
too, if it be thought fair to restrict all commerce between the 
islands and between them and America, to Am.erican vessels, or 
Philippine, special encouragement can be given to our shipping 
and theirs. 

We should, therefore, be thankful that, although we did not 
seek connection with the Philippines and its attendant care, they 
came to us in such a way that we could not with the least spark 
of manly spirit shirk the duties and responsibilities of protecting 
them. It is a burden not too great for our strength, and the 
reward, though not received in full immediately, is eventually 
sure and handsome. We must be thankful to have had at the 
critical moment a Government with sufficient courage to under- 
take the task, without whining out : "Am I my brother's 
keeper?" The alternatives would have been to restore the 
islands to Spain, and perhaps aid her in putting down an insur- 
rection already found almost uncontrollable by her ; or to 
undertake the intolerable entangling alliance of protection of the 
islands in independence, with the floundering they wo'ild have 



been sure to enter on in their ignorance ; or, again, practically 
to hand them over to some other Power — Great Britain, Ger- 
many or Japan — no one of whom would give them the degree 
of independence that we are giving them, and are sure to give 
them, the same that our own territories and states have long- 
enjoyed with so much satisfaction and pride. 

We should not be misled by the clamorous outcries of a few 
Filipino demagogues, who strive to make the most of their 
fluency of speech to their own personal benefit, working on the 
mere principle of the outs who simply wish to be in, and there- 
fore seize upon every opportunity to pick flaws in the present 
management. Their idea of liberty seems to coincide with what 
is properly called license, freedom for one's-self, with disregard 
of the just rights of others ; and their cry for independence 
appears to be based only on hopes of power for themselves. 

And let us not be scared from our purpose by a niggardly 
fear of the cost and by doubts as to the immediate profit, leaving 
out of due account the pressing duty of our rich and powerful 
nation to help forward its own and the whole world's best 
interest by advancing our peace-promoting ideas of republican- 
ism secured by universal schooling. The benefit in the end, not 
only to the islands, but to ourselves, and to the whole world, 
would be well worth far more than a tithe of all our Federal 
expenses, and the wildest, most prejudiced estimate of the cost 
to us so far has hardly been half that tithe ; and now for some 
years past the cost is next to nothing, and in the near future 
will be nothing at all, notwithstanding the advantages received 
by our manufacturing and commercial population. Already, 
this summer, the Philippine Legislative Assembly has been 
elected and is just now meeting for the discussion and treat- 
ment of all political questions that afifect the islands. Only 
one-seventieth of the population took part in the election, show- 
ing that there v^as remarkably little dissatisfaction with the 
present management of public affairs. Year by year the coun- 
try there will become more and more interested in such legis- 
lative duties, and more capable of performing them in full 
accordance with, what our own larger experience has made to 
appear reasonable to us ; and the time will not be far distant 
(for a period in national life) when the islands can be admitted 
to full fellowship in our Federal Government, without danger 
to our institutions or established policies ; or, if preferred, the 
islands could be set up as a closely and inseparably allied re- 
public — not to draw us into trouble with other countries by 
foolish international behavior, but to be subordinate in that 
respect, in return for our protection. 

It may be that these opinions about the Philippines may 
seem to you erroneous. But it will be hard to convince me of 
their error by mere gift of the gab, or by eloquence enough to 
prove that white is black, or by arguments not based on the 
direct observation of facts in the islands, or by the opinions of 

19 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 

027 538 080 5 

men not personally and sympathetically acquainted with the 
islanders, nor with Orientals in general, and not appreciative of 
their inborn capabilities and of the merely temporary character 
of their disabilities caused by defective training. Pardon my 
bluntly avowing the belief that it is a happy thing for the Fili- 
pinos that we possess their country, happy for us, and happy 
for the world. Under our government, they already manage 
most of their own afifairs and very soon (if their pretended 
friends— but real enemies — in America cease to raise obstacles) 
wii! manage them all, as much as the inhabitants of our other 
teriitories do. It will then be only a question of time and 
education when they will join equally with us in managing the 
Federal Government. Ah ! there is perhaps where the shoe 
pinches you ! For you may imagine them incapable of ever 
becoming worthy sharers with yourself in the Federal Govern- 
ment. Perhaps you go so far as to doubt whether they are, or 
ever can be, civilized enough to be capable of managing their 
own affairs, especially in a republican fashion. Yet, consider 
that they must l3e at least as enlightened as the ancient Romans 
who established a republic that lasted hundreds of years — in 
fact, until increased civilization made them overthrow the re- 
public. Really, it sometimes seems as if the most enlightened 
portion of our own republic were less capable of rightly manag- 
ing the greatest government affairs than the "wild and wooly" 
portions whose proper human instincts are less corrupted, and 
are more like t):ose of the early American settlers. They had 
the mstinctivt^ aspiration of vigorous, enlightened men, who, 
knovvinp; the supreme and universal benefits of peace, seek to 
establish it fcr themselves and for the world in such a wa}'' as 
to secure the utmost freedom for all ; so that every man may, 
accord'-isr; !o his enlightenment and ability, act freely for his own 
and the j^ublic welfare 
the freedom of others. 

\j our forefathers repressed savagery in their day, and as 
our eider brothers extinguished the possibility of a rival, and that 
a slave-holding, power within our borders, so may we give 
p' ice, enlightenment and freedom to the Philippines. Let us 
still hold to the wise purpose of our fathers : 

F jr free life brawny arm and weapon keen 
■Shall found the heaven-like realm of peace serene. 

Yours truly, 

BENJ. SMITH LYMAN. 

708 Locust St., Philadelphia, 18 October, 1907. 






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